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MR. BUTLER'S REMARKS 



AT THE DINNER OF THE 



SKMI-GENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 



OF 



MIDIILEBUIIY COLLEfiE. 



\m 



REMARKS 



" The Scholar: As Civilization advances, the pupil of Learning is 
the Master of Art." 

Mr. President: — This Toast embodies one of the 
convictions nearest mj heart. During the few minutes 
I speak, I will confine my remarks to one of the modes, 
through which the consummation prophesied in the senti- 
ment just uttered, must be attained, namely, through 
scholars delighting to honor luhatsoever things are excel- 
lent. Opposed to such a generous appreciation stand 
various prejudices, which the man bent on the highest 
culture mil withstand even unto the uttermost. Most of 
"these prejudices have their origin in a narrowness of 
mind, that seeks truth in its own little homestead, and 
nowhere else. Thus we are prone to view our country 
as the celestial empire and all foreigners as outer bar- 
harians, though the ocean of knowledge has received 
tributaries from every land. Accordingly it Is in vain 
for most Englishmen to travel, since like a snail, they 
are always at home in a shell of insular prejudices, or in 
a coach-load of luggage. Walking to and fro in Canada, 
they see England in the New World, and in this Union 
behold nothing but the turbulent spirit of democracy. 
The present age, when the ends of the earth see eye to 
eye, should it not laugh to scorn such arrogance ? Yet 
how many among us cannot rise to the dignity of a 
national predilection, but are exclusive admirers of one 
section — North, South, East, or West, — of city or 
country, of one sect, party, calling, hobby, or college, — 
veritable brethren of that Dutch cooper, who swore that 
no man but a cooper should marry his daughter. A 
true scholar may ally himself to any party, — ^but will 
never sink to a partisan, blind to see wise and good men 
among his antagonists, forgetful that all administrations 



— and alt oppositions — are but a choice of evils, and that 
as the country suffers under the best, so it can survive, 
or shake off, the worst. 

A man's own calling is prone to be a den, where he 
worships idols. Engrossing most of his attention, it is 
in his view the land of light, as a mole's hole is to a 
mole ; while other walks of hfe, as to which he is in the 
dark, pass with him for lands of darkness. Were there 
more ministers, who, like Pajson, read through Rees's 
Encyclopedia more than once, there would be fewer of 
the sacred order stigmatized as a clan or caste, touching 
society at only one point, or technical characters, the 
whole human being shaped into an official thing, and 
nature's own man, with free faculties and warm senti- 
ments, extinct. Not only do the three professions fail 
to strengthen each other, as they would do did they join 
hand in hand, but few scholars have any professional 
brethren. Spite of legal, medical, and ministerial assot- 
ciations, scholars are almost as isolated as medieval 
barons, each on his own hill-top tower, — pelicans of the 
wilderness, owls of the desert, sparrows alone on the 
house-tops. 

Nor are sectarian trammels less hampering than those 
of country, party, or profession. Every sectarian pro- 
fesses to have a monopoly of truth. For two centuries 
Protestant England refused to learn from Papal Italy 
the true reckoning of time, preferring to fight with the 
stars in their courses, rather than agree with Rome. 
Instead of co-operating as to weightier matters, where 
they coincide, evangehcal denominations are still begin- 
ning battles as to matters concerning which Scripture 
speaks nothing expressly, while temperament, taste and 
education will make men differ. Nay, in the same de- 
nomination many are intolerant of an extemporary, and 
as many of a written sermon ; many excommunicate a 
man for a shibboleth, though he have in him the root of 
the matter ; — and no wonder, for they sometimes smell 
a heresy in the Lord's prayer, — since it says nothing of 
a Mediator. 

But as to nothing are scholars so prone to narrow their 
minds, as to their favorite study or darling idea. Here 
is a man of facts, who can do nothing but accumulate 



facts, counting system-makers as dreamers. Would that 
he could feel his collections to be a rope of sand, till like 
be joined to like ; a mob, till individuals are marshalled 
under species and species under genera, like soldiers in 
an army. Over against this practical man stands a 
theorist, who in a steeple-chase of speculation ranges be- 
yond the flaming bounds of space and time, counting 
facts and fact-mongers as the small dust of the balance. 
He knows as if he knew it not, that all philosophers be- 
fore Bacon failed, through building their reasonings on 
reasonings, not on observations ; that ISTewton's greatest 
discovery was delayed, for years, by a mistake h^had 
fallen into concerning a single fact ; and that one false 
fact betrayed Lardner into his ridiculous demonstration, 
that to cross the Atlantic by steam is mathematically 
impossible. Thus men of theory and of practice stand 
affected toward each other, like the French engineers 
and soldiers in Egypt. The engineers thought the sol- 
diers were machines, while the soldiers, when certain 
engineers fell into a ditch from which they could not ex- 
tricate themselves, answered their cries for help, saying : 
" Where 's your plan ? Show us your plan. You surely 
do n't think we can help you till you show us your plan." 
Next we meet a mathematician asking concerning Para- 
dise Lost, What does it prove ? as if no man were any- 
thing more than one of Babbage's calculating machines. 
And there stands a poet, pretending that his memory is 
poorer than it is, as if the elementsruf all his creations, 
however sublime or fairy-like, were not furnished him by 
memory ; the faculty which the ancients hence styled 
" Mother of all the Muses." Moreover, there are jealous 
lovers of excellence who, like old Hunker exclusionists, 
arrogate it all to themselves, and think that they are dis- 
praised, whenever anybody else is praised. There is a 
straitest sect of purists who thank God that they are not 
as other men, because they never touch — a novel, or re- 
view, or work stitched in yellow paper. There are idola- 
ters of the past, who in Dante's vision rose before him 
with heads so tAvisted that their chins hung over their 
back-bones. There are bigots who vegetate like rhubarb 
under a barrel, and see the world only through its 
bung-hole. 



6 

I need not say that a true scholar will shun all these 
arts of dwarfing, as the navigator shuns the beacon-fire, 
and that he will make his own, the truths these one-ideaed 
men have rallied round. When he sees monomaniacs 
rushing to contradictory extremes, he will reflect that 
each may be hastening to the niche he was ordained to 
fill, as the counterpoise of some other ; as in politics, 
oppositions keep administrations from trenching upon the 
constitution ; and as on board a man-of-war, marines 
keep sailors from mutiny. Even when constrained to 
view some of his opponents in the light of Philistines, 
left€^n the borders of Canaan, to prove Israel, he will 
still recognize them as needful thorns. If he be a Con- 
servative, he will not marvel that others are reformers, 
since they know that revolutions are best prevented by 
reforms ; that every improvement is a change ; that the 
changes accompanied by the greatest evils have been 
the greatest improvements ; that the good is the enemy 
of the better ; and that the law of habit makes physicians 
let patients die according to rule, rather than recover 
through departing from rule. But if he be a Reformer, 
he will not marvel that others are conservatives, when 
they consider how many changes, rooting up wheat with 
tares, are no improvements ; how much movement is, as 
in a squirrel's rolling cage, without progress; how many 
dream that even religion was intended for nothing else 
but to be mended ;^ow following the wisest movements 
of others maybe |pfoolish for us, as Pharaoh's following 
Moses into the Red Sea proved for him. If he be the 
nursling of an Alma Mater, he will think it no proof of 
proficiency in liberal studies, to be incredulous as to the 
culture of Alumni, fostered by other mothers. Nor yet 
will he look askance at his country-cousins, self-made men ; 
for he knows that every ripe scholar has learned more by 
himself, than under tutors and governors, and that what- 
ever is taught in Colleges has been learned more merito- 
riously, — that is, in spite of greater obstacles, — beyond 
their walls. But if he be the architect of his own schol- 
arship, he will be far from sucking the bear's paws of his 
owTi self-importance, — as if he had found a more excel- 
lent w^ay ; for he feels his obligations to books, that had 
never been written but for literary institutions ; he has 



longed for teachers who, like a light shining in a dark 
place, would have shown him, at once, what he groped 
for long in vain. He knows that for lack of such a clue 
many a docile youth, lost in wandering mazes, has found 
no end ; he knows that, though he has climbed up some 
other way, yet to be taught is the natural way to learn 
science, sis to be an apprentice is the natural way to be- 
come a mechanic. Whether he has gained his learning 
in public, or in private, he will despise no man, not even 
those who despise him as an idler, and accent the word 
Industry on the penultimate syllabi^— as if they 
thought there could be no industry save in* th^tiust. 
He remembers that the greatest painter in ancient 
Greece, learned something from a conceited cobbler ; 
that the greatest engineer in modern Italy was saved 
from falling in his greatest achievement, by a common 
sailor ; that Shakspeare borrowed from ballad singers, 
wont to be classed with beggars ; and that Paul was a 
debtor to the unwise ; so that the head cannot say to 
the foot : "I have no need of thee." Moreover, he 
feels the paradox that " faiths ascend" to be no para- 
dox ; since the,cottages, not the drawing-rooms, of Eng- 
land were first to appreciate Bunyan ; the common 
people, not rulers and pharisees, heard Jesus gladly ; 
and the popular heart was prepared for the Lutheran 
resurrection of Christianity, a hundred years before any 
court, or monastery ; so that in vct|^ deed, things hid 
from the wise were revealed unto babes. * * 

0, that we had this " large, sound, round-about" ap- 
preciation, — and that in this regard we resembled the 
wise artist. In his best moods he has no eye for the 
incongruities, defilements, and rents of time in a famous 
cathedral, but he is absorbed by its sublimities, 

" Till growipg with its growth he thus dilates 
His spirit to the size of what he contemplates." 

He must behold the mammoth-marvel of Rome — the 
Colisseum, — in ruin ; but he is careful to behold it by 
moonlight ; — by moonlight " that softens doAvn the hoar 
austerity of rugged desolation, and fills up, as 'twere 
anew, the gaps of centuries, leaving that beautifuLthat 
still is so, and makin.o; that which is not." 



'? "'^^^" xxxtv^vx..-3 



»ixnr\ I \Jt~ 



'-UIMbRESS 



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028 355 631 1 



"Were onr appreciation of excellence tlius expansive 
and fraternizing, hemmed in by no lines of state or 
nation, sect or party, bread-study, or lady-love study, 
the pupil of science would be the master of art. Let 
all scholars, then, meet and embrace, like Joseph and 
Benjamin, though one vras reared in Canaan and the 
other in Egypt : let us not be more haughty than 
Naaman as to taking advice from a Jewish maid ; let 
us have more of the spirit which raised a mortal to 
the skies, an^Oess of that which drew an angel down ; — 
t houg h rivals^ mind let us be brothers in heart. Then 
jdMBb -Boast more men of many-sided culture, com- 
m^M by that which every joint supplieth. The man 
'of a single aim also shall be aided as to his pet pursuit. 
All science being interpendent, he shall seize some 
hitherto undetected golden chain, or commune vinculum^ 
by which other departments are waiting to elevate his 
own higher than it has ever risen. Whether general or 
particular scholars, every steam-car will be a shuttle 
weaving closer the web of our congeniality, for we shall: 
walk in the steps of Paul quoting heathen poets, of 
Bacon rendering unto the alchemist the, things that are 
the alchemist's, and of Rome conquering the world bj 
adopting the excellencies of enemies, — the Gallic sword,- 
the Grecian shield, the Samnite discipline, the ships of" 
Carthage. Whatever others may do then, let us spoil 
Hhe Egyptians ai^B[pall the world. 

There is s^^rsoul of goodness in things evil, 
Would n^^wservingly distil it out. 

I beg leave tten*to propose this sentiment : — 
" As we scholars to-day meet old friends, the world' 
seems warmer ; may it ever seem wider when we make- 
new ones.'* 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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028 355 631 T 



